Lowe heading to prison in death of twins

Apr. 27, 2013

Lindsey Lowe will be eligible for parole at age 77. / George Walker IV / File / The Tennessean

Written by

Tena Lee

Gannett Tennessee

A Sumner County judge preparing to sentence a 26-year-old woman for killing her newborn twins stopped for a moment Friday to reflect on their short lives.

From the bench, Criminal Court Judge Dee David Gay read the names of the infants, Mark Alvin Michael Lowe and Paul Dugard Tate Lowe. He noted each weighed six-and-a-half pounds and lived for five minutes.

Their mother, Lindsey Lowe, killed them in the bathroom of her parents’ house.

“An entire life spent in a commode,” Gay said.

The judge gathered himself and then sentenced Lowe to two life sentences for murdering the twins and 25 years each on two counts of aggravated child abuse. The sentences will be served concurrently, meaning Lowe will not be eligible for parole until she is 77 years old.

Lowe did not testify at her trial in March, but she read a statement to the judge during her sentencing hearing Friday.

“I have caused untold grief,” Lowe said through tears.

It took a jury just over two hours March 19 to convict Lowe for smothering the infants in a toilet in her parents’ home in September 2011. Their bodies were discovered two days later by Lowe’s mother in a laundry basket beside her bed.

“I cannot explain why I put my babies in a laundry basket. I can only say I’m sorry,’’ Lowe said.

She said she attended the babies’ funerals and has visited their graves often.

Several spoke on Lowe’s behalf Friday, including her younger sister Lacey and her father, Mark. Each described her as honest and meek and someone who attended church regularly, even singing in the choir.

“If I had to pick someone to trust my life to, it would be Lindsey without a doubt,” Mark Lowe said.

More than 60 friends, family and fellow City Road United Methodist Church members sat in the courtroom at Lowe’s sentencing hearing.

Dr. Pamela Auble, a forensic psychologist who treated Lowe after the murders, said Lowe was at a low risk for violent behavior and said research shows that is often the case with women who kill their babies.

“Usually this type of crime is situational and not part of a long-standing pattern,” she said.

Gay questioned whether Lowe was being truthful in a statement she submitted to him in which she claimed she was date-raped twice by the twins’ father. Lowe was engaged to another person at the time the twins were conceived.

“Is that supposed to devalue the life of these children?” he said. “I have a serious problem with that — in taking responsibility for what you did.”